HOPE — and, in exactly two verses, a CORD. The noun stands in thirty-five verses of the Hebrew Bible: in thirty-one it is hope (Job 14:7's there is hope for a tree; Jeremiah 29:11's an outcome and a hope, already on these pages; Ruth 1:12), in two it is a man's name (a Tikvah at 2 Kings 22:14 and another at Ezra 10:15), and in Joshua 2:18 and 2:21 it is the scarlet cord Rahab ties in her window. The root is qavah, to stretch or be drawn taut — whence a measuring-line (qav), a cord, and the tension of waiting for something. English has no word that does both jobs, and the translation prints ‘cord’ and keeps the pun here. ⚠ The count is by reading, not by string: the consonants also match Isaiah 40:19's retuqot, silver chains, which is a different word. ⭐ The rabbis built on the coincidence: Megillah 14b makes the prophetess Huldah, wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, a descendant of Rahab on the strength of this very word. And Hosea 2:17 (not yet on these pages) will make tiqvah a ‘door of hope’ in the valley of Achor, the valley that takes its name from Achan's stoning at Joshua 7. → first discussed at Joshua 2:18